


This Is What I Chose, This is What I Accept

by Velocity_Owl87



Category: Thor (Movies), Thor - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Character Study, Childbirth, Coercion, Emotional Manipulation, F/M, Gender or Sex Swap, Introspection, Jealousy, Loki Does What He Wants, Love Confessions, Possessive Loki, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-30
Updated: 2015-03-30
Packaged: 2018-03-20 08:41:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3643893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Velocity_Owl87/pseuds/Velocity_Owl87
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A loose sequel to "We Are Free To Choose, But We Are Not Free From The Consequences of our Choice." </p><p>Tora is ready to give birth to the heir of the throne and while she is in labour, Loki explains all the history and all he has done to make sure that no one will ever have the throne and Tora. But especially Tora herself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Is What I Chose, This is What I Accept

**Author's Note:**

> I wasn't planning on writing another piece in this thread, but it has happened and I wanted to show more of why Loki took the steps that he did and when his feelings and thoughts came to that point in his life. He's not quite clear as to why he feels this way, but he won't stop for anyone or anything to make sure that Tora is his and his alone. So this is a sort of before and after portrait of how they ended up where they did.
> 
> Not as dark as the last one, but still a bit off.
> 
> Proofed and edited, but if there are mistakes, they will be fixed.

She had started when she saw him in the doorway of her chambers. She hadn’t expected him to be there and she nearly gasped out when she saw him standing there. But she refused to give him the satisfaction and laboriously made her way towards her sewing table. There were still a few items she wanted to finish for the child that was due to arrive any day and she wanted to get them done. But not with him there.

She didn’t want him to hover like he had been in the past couple of months. She hated that he was seeing her at her most vulnerable and weakest. Especially now that she moved much more slowly now that she was close to giving birth to the heir that all of Asgard had held their breath for in anticipation.

She stopped often and she constantly put her hand on her back, her face a mask of pain as she walked. She was a far cry from the lithe and fast moving girl Loki had grown up watching. Now, she was a tired woman who needed to pause every so often as she walked from her chambers and to his room.

“How much longer?”

Loki asked her, watching her walk. It wasn’t that he was being unnecessarily cruel.  She had refused any help from him when it was offered and he had learned to keep his distance from her. It wasn’t that she would get violent, but rather, it was the banked rage that she looked at him that deterred him from coming near her.

It was odd that she onlysubmitted in the bedroom and now that she was so close, she was even denying him that as well. He supposed he could have taken her by force, but even he had his limits on how far he would push his advantage over her.

“A few-”

She didn’t finish her sentence, since at that moment, her water broke and she fell to her knees in front of him.

Loki didn’t recall even moving. One minute he was standing a good distance away from her. The next, he was kneeling beside her and easing her onto the floor before calling out for a midwife.

“When she gets here, go!” Tora hissed at him, making him shake his head.

“I’m not going anywhere. Not until I see this and you through.”

Tora’s eyes narrowed as she glared at him while both of them ignored the bustle of the midwife and her helpers as they started to get her ready to give birth on the rug in front of their bed.

“Can’t you let me do this alone?”

He shook his head, his face flat and expressionless before he moved so that his lips were just an inch away from her ear.

“I’ve stood beside you all my life. I won’t leave you just to lose you. Especially not now. So I will stay.”

Tora groaned in pain as a contraction hit and Loki shifted so that he was behind her and supporting her weight while also being able to talk to her as well.

“When did this start?”

Loki was about to answer her when another cry tore out of her throat and the midwife caught his attention.

“Talk to her. This is going to take awhile. Distract her.”

Loki nodded and started to tell Tora what she had asked of him.

-Ever since he could recall, she had been there. If not directly in front of him, then on the side, at the corner of his eye. Bright. Very bright, with her gold spun hair and wide smile. Loki thinks that her hair was the first thing that he remembers really seeing. He recalled with great clarity, how her hair felt when it was clutched in his hand. How she had giggled as she gently untangled her hair from his thin, grasping hold.

He remembered toddling after her when she was quicker, more adept at mastering her own two feet and running away from him. Not meanly, but in jest, making him chase after her and fall down when he couldn’t pick up the same speed. She would always pick him up when that happened, shushing him before the tears came. Always promising that it wouldn’t happen and always being persuaded by their mother’s ladies to be handed over.

He didn’t think that those times, when he had her exclusively to himself, would ever end. He believed that it would always be the same and that they would exclusively belong to each other. But then Balder was born and Tora was taken away into the gaggle of ladies after she had woken up one day with blood on her nightdress and on the bed across from him in the nursery.

It was then that her belongings disappeared and she was nowhere to be found. Loki searched for her high and wide, even employed some of his childish magic to look for her, but it wasn’t until mother came with all her ladies, Tora included, that he found out.

And threw a fit about it.

It was such a tempestuous one that Lady Frigga had to take him aside to explain the situation to him, while her ladies shepherded her red-faced daughter away into the weaving rooms.

It was in her rooms, while she was stroking his hair that he was told why it had to be that way.

“She needs to learn to be a lady. She’s old enough to start to learn.”

Their mother, the Lady Frigga, tried to explain in an effort to soothe his bewilderment and hurt feelings at having his sister wave before being dragged off into those chambers that males were not allowed to enter.

“Who decided this?”

Lady Frigga sighed and silently stroked his hair for a while before she finally replied.

“Her wyrd.”

Loki, even as young as he was, understood.

It didn’t mean he ever did learn to like it.

~*~*~*~*~

Just like it didn’t mean that he had to like it when Tora’s aptitude at wielding seidr was mediocre at best and his was on par with their grandmother Besta. In contrast, Loki’s distance fighting was not what the swordmasters expected of him and failed at hammering home into him. It shouldn’t have been up for discussion and they should have remained in their respective paths with Loki training in swordsmanship and battle techniques and Thora learning to wield seidr and with both of them barely mastering the skills that they weren’t suited to.

It shouldn’t have been, but when Tora ended up defending her brother after a particularly brutal sword practice and Loki casting an improbably complicated spell that their roles were switched. It shouldn’t have angered Loki as much as it had, since he got to see his sister again, away from the sterile division that the ladies had imposed upon them. It was true that they didn’t have as much time to interact, but she was there.

No matter how different their fighting styles, they were close to each other and she would always glance over and smile at him like she had when they were younger. That hidden smile made even the most brutal practices somewhat okay.

Loki could have continued on like that for ages, knowing that despite everything that was happening, he still had that hidden piece of her to himself. The part of her that had them hiding in the library on the quiet side of the afternoon and showing each other what they had learned and sharing secrets and knowledge that they couldn’t trust anyone else with.

He relished those times and he looked forward to heading off and hiding in a dusty corner after receiving the signal from her once she was done practice.

But it changed when Lord Sif appeared.

~*~*~*~*~

He was the opposite of what Loki himself was: Tall, well-built, bright as the sun and as sweet as honey and in Loki’s opinion, almost as cloying. He had a good heart and he caught Tora’s interest to the point that she rarely signalled Loki to hide in the library. In fact, she wasn’t at practice unless Lord Sif was around. She spent more time with her ladies and Loki felt himself being shunted away and being too immature to ask her to just...look at him.

He supposed that was why he had shaved Lord Sif’s head after he had found out that he had kissed Tora. It wasn’t for Lord Sif to take, that moment was supposed to be his and Tora’s to share.

Despite knowing that it was wrong to want her in such a way, at the end of the day, Tora was his. She was never supposed to be anyone else’s and despite knowing that wanting his sister in such a way was not what he should have been feeling, he couldn’t ever suppress those feelings or force them to go away. No matter how much he studied or wore himself out, he couldn’t silence that voice in the back of his mind whispering her name. Or that longing that lay curled up in his being until he wasn’t able to control until he released it in a wave of relief mingled with shame.

It was that mixture of emotions that had pushed him into shaving Lord Sif’s golden mane and hiding out from a furious Tora that had vowed to make him pay for his prank.

“It won’t ease things if you avoid them, Loki.”

He sighed when he heard his mother’s soft voice at his ear as he sat huddled in the mustiest corner of the library, a book open in front of him as he played with minor conjurings while he waited for his sister to lose her rage so that he could propose a werguild for his transgressions.

“I know, but it might give her time to calm down and not gut me.”

His mother laughed softly at that as she sat down across from him and waved her own fingers so that butterflies joined the small shimmer of sparkles that he had created.

“She will as soon as she tires out. Lord Sif has helped your case some, so she has calmed down and is willing to lay her animosity aside. Only if you will apologize.”

Loki sighed and watched his mother’s butterflies changed colour alongside the sparkles he created as he weighed the possibilities of following his mother’s advice.

It was a cheaper werguild to swallow his pride, his thwarted desires and his anger at having to share his sister with an outsider to just apologize.

But he knew that if he did, he’d be giving up his claim on her. It was a small step, but it would be the first in losing her. He didn’t want to do it. To take that step and start severing that connection, but he could see, in the face of Tora’s anger, that he was going to have to do just that.

It was then, that he made that decision, that he raised his hand, clenched it into a fist and dispelled the sparkles and the butterflies as well.

“I’ll apologize.”

Despite doing the right thing, he still remembered his mother’s strained smile as they stood  and made their way towards Tora and the waiting court.

~*~*~*~*~

He thought he had her, for that brief time before Midgard caught her attention. He was sure that it was going to happen once he knew what he really was.

But Tora had turned her back on him and he had gone mad in his grief and in his rage and had attempted to destroy all of the realms while in the grip of that delirium.

He couldn’t understand what John Foster had that he didn’t. What Lord Sif had had before that. He couldn’t comprehend why she had chosen them over him and it hurt.

He couldn’t comprehend why, despite all her declarations, she wouldn’t turn and look at him in that way. Why she refused to see what was in front of her.

It hurt and the rage and grief didn’t dissipate until the sorrow over losing the Lady Frigga washed it all away.

He had tried his best to not show emotion at her death. He wasn’t there when she took her last journey. But it hurt and he knew that it was an ache that wouldn’t ever go away. Maybe even not ease for as long as he lived.

She had been the only mother he’d ever known and her death, and the knowledge that John Foster had caused it rankled. Despite knowing what was at stake with the ether and Malekith, he never forgot that John Foster had been the cause of her death. So he plotted while he helped Tora in her quest. After all, it had been John Foster that had caused his mother’s death.

It had also been Foster that had taken Tora from him as well.

So he waited until the time was right to let his disguise slip and to come back to a panicked Asgard as the saviour it needed. He had seen their relief when Gugnir was handed to him and he had begun the projects to rebuild Asgard and have the realm be as magnificent as it was under Odin and his mother.

With all of that, he knew that there would be no opposition to him taking Tora and making her his permanently. He knew that despite what had been between them (although somewhat toned down once Tora found out about Lord Ullr) Lord Sif wouldn’t be an obstacle at all.

He had been right. Even if he knew that it had been underhanded in blackmailing her to have her, he didn’t regret that he had done it.

She was his. She was his queen and the throne was theirs, just as Odin had predicted.

“And this is where we are now.”

Loki murmured before Tora pushed for the last time, his words lost in her screams as she laboured to bring their child forth. Once the child was born, his screams joined hers and she fell against him, boneless and breathing heavily as the midwife held the squalling child up so they could see him, the slight blue tinge of his skin fading to a bright pink the longer that she held him.

“It’s a boy!”

The midwife exclaimed as she briskly wiped him clean and swaddled him, while the other attendants coaxed the afterbirth from Tora.

“Your heir, Sire, Lady.”

~*~*~*~*~*~

“So what happens after this?”

Tora asked him as she sat nursing Modi, their firstborn, her eyes on the gardens below.

“The same thing as before. I wasn’t kidding when I said that you are mine and I am never letting you go.”

Loki replied as he stood behind her and placed his hand on her shoulder, squeezing her shoulder enough to drive his point home.

She sighed.

He ignored her and kissed her instead.

He counted it a victory when she didn’t turn her head away and received his kiss with as much as grace as she could muster.

Soon, he knew, there would be a sibling for Modi.

He could be patient for that.

After all, it wouldn’t be long.

END.

 

 


End file.
